Exam

We have our midterm coming up next Tuesday (Nov 5). This will be the only in-class exam, as the final exam will be a take-home exam. Here are some resources.

• Summary of the review session (Nov 2).

  • In addition to what I summarized here, we also discussed problem 6 of the practice midterm briefly. Here is what I said. The setup here boils down to the initial state at $t = 0$, which evolves in time, as governed by the Hamiltonian. The time evolution for this Hamiltonian (constant B field coupling to spin) corresponds to the rotation of the spin around the direction of the magnetic field. Initially, the spin is up along the $z$ direction. So, for part (a), there won't be any change to the state (except for a phase accumulation). For part (b), the state will rotate in the $yz$ plane with the Larmor precession frequency. You must do the math to illustrate these points, using the same math that we used in early homework problems.

• Last year’s midterm exam: There were a bit too many problems. I think this year's exam should be about two problems less.

• The review summary of the last year’s review for the midterm.

Quiz

• Quiz 3, Oct 29: Virial theorem, Symmetry (with solutions)

• Quiz 2, Oct 22: Perturbation (with solutions)

• Quiz 1, Oct 15: Formalism (with solutions)

Homework

• Homework 5, due Nov 12: Variational principle, WKB, Bohr-Sommerfeld

• Homework 4, due Oct 30: Symmetry, Hydrogren-like atom (with solutions)

  • Addition: Prob. 1: some footnote about the mathematical group, since some students asked about it after class.—4:36PM, Oct 22, 2013

• Homework 3, due Oct 22: Symmetry+ (with solutions)

• Homework 2, due Oct 15: Perturbation (with solutions)

• Homework 1, due Oct 8: The basics of QM (with solutions)

  • Addition: 3(a): “and”—2:28PM, Oct 07, 2013

  • Change: 6(a): the wave function is → the corresponding state is given by.—10:47AM, Oct 04, 2013